Rope climbing is a very effective form of exercise because it maintains the climber's arm and back muscles under dynamic tension. In other words, the climber's muscles are subjected to a pulling force due to part or all of the climber's weight as he supports himself on the rope whether or not he is moving up or down the rope. Superimposed on that force is an acceleration component which manifests itself when the climber pulls himself up or lowers himself down on the rope. Placing one's body under dynamic tension of this type improves one's muscle tone, blood circulation, respiration and general mental and physical fitness.
Rope climbing may be practiced as an exercise in and of itself or as part of training for mountain or rock climbing.
There have been some efforts to make exercise machines to simulate the act of climbing a rope. Usually these machines require the user to pull down on a rope hand-over-hand, with the rope passing through some kind of friction or drag mechanism that offers resistance to the pulling motion. One example of such exercise apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,570. The trouble with this type of apparatus is that it really does not simulate accurately the act of rope climbing which, as noted previously, subjects the arms to dynamic tension whether or not the climber is moving up or down on the rope. In the existing rope climbing exercise machines of which I am aware, no attempt is made to simulate the effect of the user's weight. In other words, no opposing force is exerted on the rope unless the user is actually accelerating the rope. Therefore, the user's muscles are not maintained under more or less constant tension as he pulls down on the rope, hand-over-hand. Rather, the force exerted on each arm varies from some maximum value at the top of each pulling motion to near zero at the bottom of the stroke. Such variable or intermittent tensioning of the body muscles is not as effective as constant dynamic tension in conditioning the body.
Also, prior exercise machines of this general type have tended to be fairly large and complicated pieces of machinery which take up a large amount of floor space and are relatively expensive to make.